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Copyright, 1928, by
DUFFIELD AND ComPANY
Printed in the United States
The Cornwall Press


For My Son Henry
A reminder of the river, the canoe, and the
one who taught him how to dip a paddle.


By the same author:
The Key of the Fields
The Footpath Way
Tin Cowrie Dass
The Siamese Cat
The Winter Bell
The Far Cry
Man Eater
Dulcarnon
Tao Tales


CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SHERIFF HARDY’s MAP . . . . 3
II. BAD SILVER . . . . . . . . 22
III. LOLA . . . . . . . . . . . 40
IV. HARDHACK Pond . . . . . . 60
V. THE CAMPERs on HARDHACK . . 75
VI. POPPLE HOUSE . . . . . . . 94
VII. THE DEVIL's KITCHEN . . . . 108
VIII. INJUN MEDICINE . . . . . . 124
IX. MARK's AWAKENING . . . . . 140





ILLUSTRATIONS
A strange man looked down upon them gravely,
as if he had been standing there all the time
frontispiece
The mist, like smoke in a draft, blew faster and
faster in their faces . . . . opposite page 44
He went head foremost against a pair of blue
overalls, seized them, tackled and fell
opposite page 80
“Stop where you are!” shouted Mark
opposite page 154


LOLA THE BEAR





LOLA THE BEAR
CHAPTER I
SHERIFF HARDY’s MAP
“MAPs!” cried a bass voice at the front
door. “Maps for Judge Boswell!”
The voice rang through the fore part of
the house like a cheerful song.
Mark Boswell was lying in an arm-
chair. For the past fortnight he had been
a rather sick boy, and this was his third
day downstairs. He raised himself to lis-
ten. A voice like that could proceed from
only one man. Mark’s face had lost a good
deal of sunburn, but now it went from pale
to red, as he sat up, excited and hopeful,
running his fingers through his yellow
stubble of hair.
“What kind o' maps?” retorted the
3.


LOLA THE BEAR
sharp, inquisitive voice of Hazel, the
“hired girl.”
“Don’t you fret!” laughed the other.
“Maps. That's all you need to know, my
dear. In a gen'al way, Maps. They ain’t
handsome to look at, not pretty like you,
young woman; but I guess they’ll serve
the Judge fast enough. He ast me for 'em.
How is he, anyway? And how’s his boy?”
Mark smiled to himself. Only one man
would have called Hazel pretty or young,
in such a loud, generous, warming fashion.
“Mr. Boswell ain’t to home.” Her voice
was not half so fretful as before. “Mr.
Boswell's be'n away over three weeks.
I’ve worried 'most to flinders. That boy
Mark, he's laid abed sick, and tain't like
his father to do so: we ain’t had word nor
scrap from the Judge since he went
a-fishin'. . . .” -
“Dear Land!” cried the visitor. “I’m
sorry to hear that!”
Mark rose to his feet, though he found


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
them still rather tottering objects to stand
O11.
“It must be Sheriff Hardy,” he said. “O
Hazel, ask the Sheriff to come in. I want
to see him more than anybody.”
A clatter of hob-nailed boots resounded
through the hallway, and Josephus Hardy
stood in the library door. A big, brown,
shaggy man, more than six feet tall, who
carried lightly under rough clothing some
two hundred pounds of bone and muscle,
he pulled off his dusty straw “cow-break-
fast” hat and made a bow into the Judge's
library.
“Well, I’m tol'able easy to see, they tell
me, when there ain't no trees round,” he
declared, grinning. “How are you, boy?
Be'n fallin' off any more o’ them ridge-
poles lately? What's happened to your
father?”
Mark's face grew pale again, and tired,
and disappointed.
“I was hoping you'd tell me that,” he
replied. “Father went fishing three weeks
5.


LOLA THE BEAR
ago Wednesday. I came down sick the
next Friday, and was out of my head for a
while. Father sent word by Tommy Cody,
just about then, that he was going in deeper
to try a new place. We haven't heard any-
thing more. I was hoping you'd run across
him.”
The boy sat down, looking miserable.
Sheriff Hardy came forward cautiously
until he stood on the library rug.
“Gosh, they are treach’rous!” he mut-
tered. “Hope Ihain't defaced 'em with my
boot-nails. Jest like a hen on ice. Awful
treach’rous, them hardwood floors.”
He shied his hat under the table, and sat
down timidly on the edge of a chair, facing
Mark. His brown face, heavy as a buf-
falo's, wore a grimy coating of dust and
unshaven beard; but his eyes twinkled
bright and clean. The Sheriff was a good
man; and as he perched there, looking so
awkward and so much too large for any
indoor space, he seemed a great comforter.
6.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
“But father,” said Mark, “never went
into the woods to stay so long, without...”
“Shoo-fly!” cried the Sheriff. “Never
you bother your head, son. I guess Judge
Boswell he knows the four carnal points o'
heaven. Shoo-fly! He'll come homin'
back like a old belfry pigeon, to-morrer,
trust him, or next day, maybe. Never you
lose no sleep about him in the woods.”
This had a reassuring sound; but Mark
observed that Mr. Hardy's eyes failed to
enforce it, and went wandering instead
round the book-shelves, along the treacher-
ous floor, then out at window into the
bright August sunshine.
“You didn't see father anywhere?”
“No,” replied the Sheriff, staring now
at a bowlful of choke-cherry branches in
the fireplace,—green leaves jewelled with
dark-red pendants. “No. That’s a fact.
I didn't.”
“Things can happen,” said Mark, “in
the woods, to a man all alone.”
Josephus Hardy's wandering eyes came
7.


LOLA THE BEAR
back with a snap. He nodded his big dusty
head.
“And that’s a fact, too,” he admitted.
He faced the boy squarely and honestly.
“I know that. Things do happen in the
woods. Not always, though. Not often.”
Mark waited for him to continue; but
the Sheriff began staring again at the
choke-cherries in the fireplace, and nursed
his right fore-arm. The clock ticked, then
struck eleven, then went on ticking louder
than before.
“Must be a change comin' in the
weather,” quoth Mr. Hardy. “My old
arm smarts, kind of, this mornin', where
they cut that bullet out of her. A man
mistook me for a deer. Least, a man said
he did. Terrible ee-roneous feller. His
eye-sight might 'a' been better if I hadn't
put him in jail onct afore.”
“Look here!” demanded Mark. “What
do you think has happened to father?”
The Sheriff puckered his lips under the
heavy, brown, piratical moustache.
8.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
“Nothin’,” said he. “Your father's all
right. Nothin'.”
The boy moved impatiently in his chair.
“But he's been three weeks away.”
Hardy appeared to be chewing upon this
fact. “Yeah,” he grumbled. At last he
spoke.
“Where did Tommy Cody allow he seen
Phim?”
“Up the river, on the middle fork; two
miles this side of Tinderbox Hill.”
“Humph!” growled the Sheriff.
“Thought so, maybe.”
He turned on the edge of his chair and,
raising his voice, sent a jovial roar echoing
through the house.
“Young woman! Oh, young woman!
Bring us back them maps, will ye?”
Hazel must have been listening in the
hall, she appeared so promptly. Her
crabbed old face was wreathed in smiles;
and as she handed the Sheriff a roll of un-
tidy papers, no girl could have acted more
bashful and simpering.
9.


LOLA THE BEAR
“Bless your pretty heart!” cried Hardy.
“That's them. Many’s the thanks to you,
my dear! Now I won’t trouble you no
more.”
Hazel, in great embarrassment, with-
drew. Her flatterer sat waiting, papers in
hand, till the sound of her footsteps re-
treated, and a distant door closed after her.
Then he winked at Mark, solemnly.
“I found a wild bees’ nest onct,” he de-
clared, “on top that old granite quarry to
Beaver Lake. Honey was all an-oozin'
down over a busted slab o’ rock. I guess
your girl Hazel ain't us’t to smilin', much.
That's what she made me think of, right
away—honey a-tricklin' over granite.
Don’t she?”
Mark laughed as he had not laughed for
many days. Hazel, the kindly tyrant of his
childhood, had done her best for a mother-
less boy; but there was a funny side to
Hazel, and the Sheriff, with his big, star-
ing gray eyes, had seen it.
“Now, that's right!” declared Hardy.
IO.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
the bit of oily paper, thrust it into his
pocket. “You know, Mr. Hardy, as well
as I do, that somebody ought to go hunt for
father. I’m going.”
His burly adviser rose, and looked him
straight in the eyes. There was no more
loose talk or evasion between the man and
the youngster.
“All right, Mark,” said Josephus,
frankly. “If you feel that way, I guess
you better. I wan't none too easy about
your father, myself.”
Mark went to the library door and
called.
“Hazell O Hazell”
The housekeeper came presently and
stood before them, her shrewd old face
wearing yet some trace of Mr. Hardy’s
influence; but no sooner had Mark declared
what he meant to do, than the honey was
gone from her look, and nothing remained
but good New England granite.
“You ain’t a-going!” she snapped. “Not
out o' this house!”
I5.


LOLA THE BEAR
“I am,” said Mark.
“You ain’t,” said Hazel. “You can’t
hardly stand up this minute. Let 'em ring
fire-bells and roust out the whol’ town, way
they did when the Pettengill boys got lost
and Chub froze to death. Let 'em do that
again. I don’t care. You're not a-goin’
one step.”
The Sheriff put in a mollifying word.
“Guess you better allow him to, my
dear,” he ventured.
“Who is your dear?” Hazel turned
upon him savagely. “I ain’t, anyhow.
And while the Judge is gone, I keep the say
of it. You can talk jest as smooth as you
want to. Mark don’t go one single step!”
Whenever Hazel grew indignant, she
pulled her chin down tight against her
throat, interlocked her fingers at the top
of her apron, shook her head primly, then
stood quivering all over. She did so now.
It meant that she knew herself to be in the
right, and would stay there, inflexible.
Mrs. Rhadamanthus, the Judge used to
I6.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
call her, when describing this attitude.
Mark, who recognized it only too well, was
on the point of losing his temper.
“I’m not a baby!” he began.
“That's so!” retorted the housekeeper.
“Babies have some gumption. Babies
know when they’re sick.”
How this unseemly argument might
have ended, it would be hard to say. But
just then the front door-bell rang, and the
ringer, waiting in the vestibule without,
gave a fine, deep, Sonorous cough. It was
the Doctor, of course. Dr. Hale, the be-
loved physician of all that town and coun-
try, was known, before he appeared in
sight, by the welcome noise of his great,
outdoor cough. He had cured many
troubles of body and soul, but never that
personal annoyance. Perhaps he had never
the time to cure it, or the thought to spare
on himself. Two generations of anxious
men and women had heard and blessed it,
when, in snow or rain, glaring dog-days or
blind zero weather, at noon or midnight,
I7.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
Sheriff's hand, outside, lay heavy on its
mate.
“Oh, these men!” wailed the house-
keeper, struggling in vain. “They walk
right over you!”
Then the door suddenly opened, and let
her go staggering back.
“Well, well!” laughed the Doctor, enter-
ing. He loomed even larger than Mr.
Josephus Hardy. The sunlight seemed to
follow him indoors and cling round his
massive white head like a sign of all
the human benedictions wished upon it
throughout many years. “Good morning!
Good morning! What's this I’m told?”
Hazel the tyrant stood conquered and
smiling.
“Here's an awful bad boy, Doctor,” she
replied.
“Well, well!” said Dr. Hale, putting
down his hat. “Of course he is. Of course
he is. His father was. Come in here, boy,
till I take your pulse and look down your
throat again. You want to run wild in the
I9.


LOLA THE BEAR
woods, do you? Hazel, go get me a table-
spoon, like a good girl. Come here to the
window, Mark. My eyes are growing a
little old. A little old, like everything
else.” -
Whatever their age, the Doctor's eyes
were very blue and full of sagacious twink-
lings, as he pressed the silver spoon upon
Mark's tongue and peered in after it, by the
light from the library window.
“Ho!” he murmured. “Ha. Thrown
off. Pretty well. The constitution fairly
tough, Mark. Yes, yes. All your mother's
people were given the same way, but they
lived long and well, God bless them. There,
there. . . .” The Doctor turned slowly
toward Josephus, who sat on the corner of
the table, lost in admiration. “I think
you're right, Sheriff. If this boy wears
good light woollen next the skin, and avoids
the night air off the rivers . . . You'll
take care of him, Josephus?” -
Hazel started forward to make a pro-
test, which nobody heeded.
2O.


SHERIFF HARDY'S MAP
“I’ll take care,” boomed the Sheriff, “so
fur as I can. If I can't, I’ll give him in
charge to Lola.”
“You mean Lewie's grandson?” The
Doctor puckered the lids of his wise blue
eyes, and seemed to be calling back the
appearance of some far-off person. “You
mean Lola the Injun?”
Hardy nodded.
“Sure,” he answered. “Lola’s the best
man up there, case o' trouble.”
Doctor Hale patted Mark on the head as
if he had been much younger.
“Couldn’t choose a better man myself
than Lola,” said he. “I vaccinated his
grandfather and all the camp, one day,
knee-deep in snow. All right, Mark; don't
you forget the woollen underwear.” -
And Mark, filled with delight, gratitude,
and expectation, knew that he was going to
look for his father in the woods.
2I.


CHAPTER II
BAD SILVER
“I will say,” observed Hardy, “that for a
fellow your size you ain't altogether a
slouch.”
The Sheriff's plump little bay mare, a
brisk and cheerful roadster, had gone tug-
ging forward with great energy, rattling
down one hill, scrambling up the next.
Now, at the sound of his voice, she cocked
her ears and started on afresh, as though
rebuked. Her master had broken the
drowsy afternoon silence on this country
road.
“No, you ain't no slouch at all.”
Mark knew this for a high compliment.
The Sheriff, half turned on their seat, was
looking down into the tail of the wagon,
where lay the two bundles which Mark had
made ready for his expedition.
22.


BAD SILVER
“You done them inside half an hour,”
said Josephus, approvingly, “for I timed
you. You done 'em up neat, with noth-
ing but what thes a necessary need for.
Blankit, stockin's, change o’ wool, hatchet,
fry-pan. . . .” He completed the cata-
logue in a whisper, nodding as he counted,
and bending down the fingers of one big,
sunburnt hand. “Lots o' grown men don't
know how to go into the woods. You're
all there in a two-fist grab, and all right,
Mark.” He returned to his reins, laugh-
ing. “Ho, quiet, Milly, ye can’t uproot the
whiffle-tree, ye fool girl!”
Milly the red mare did her best to con-
tradict him, and stepped out faster than
eVer.
“Her walking gait,” ventured Mark, “is
better than some trots.”
The Sheriff nodded solemnly, as if his
companion had sounded the depths of
human wisdom.
“I love willin’ folks, that pull snug up
into the collar, and go for’ard handy.—
3.
23.


BAD SILVER
The Sheriff must have read his thought.
“Bein’ pulled through a knot-hole ain’t
so bad, hey, Mark, when you find all this
on tºother side?”
“No,” said Mark. “Yes. I mean . . .
Well, Mr. Hardy, you can’t guess!”
Hardy chuckled.
“I kin too guess!” he declared. “The
woods. Gorry!”
They fell silent again. The sun went
down behind trees. When they had
climbed a long hill, the road suddenly
plunged downward to its end, the firs gave
way once more to alders, and Milly was
tugging the wagon through a narrow,
swampy lane where the wheels bumped
over many a rock, stuck in mud-holes, or
trundled softly on trackless meadow-grass.
Twilight gathered.
“Nigh the river, we are now,” said the
Sheriff. “Widow Johnquest lives beyond
the next bend. We'll sleep in her hay-mow
to-night.”
They splashed through a shallow brook,
25.


LOLA THE BEAR
and rattled round a sharp turn of the alder
lane. There, all at once, a wide field
opened, slanting hollow toward the glow
in the sky, against which ran black billowy
hemlock tops, with a curl of chimney
smoke wandering above. The house be-
came visible last of all, banked under the
hemlock darkness, and so gray that it too
might have been smoke, melting and
mounting spirally at its gable.
A dog barked. Echoes of his barking
rang from the woods behind, as though an
unseen pack answered the cry.
“Hallo, Jowler!” hailed the Sheriff.
The dog ran forward, a black and white
thing frisking down hill.
“Well, well! Goodhound!” said Hardy.
The dog, hearing his voice, barked again
with a difference, to say that a friend had
CO1116.
Two patches of lamplight appeared
through the front of the house, a window,
and a door in which stood the lean silhou-
ette of a woman.
26.


BAD SILVER
work had bent her back like a piece of bar-
rel hoop. Never once did she turn to greet
her visitors. But Mark, as he sat down
with the Sheriff by the lamp, felt somehow
that a keen pair of black eyes had flashed
at him and taken his measure. When sup-
per was ready, she brought it silently to
the table, and, retreating, sat in the far
corner, her arms tightly folded. The old
black-and-white dog made a hassock for
her feet—a hassock that snored or now
and then comfortably stretched.
“So you ain’t had no cloud o' customers
here?” Hardy broke off a lump of steam-
ing blueberry cake, buttered it, looked upon
it with loving eyes, then took an ogre's bite.
“You would, ma'am, if they knowed the
taste of your cookin'. Wouldn't she, boy?”
Mark agreed. The Sheriff halved a
platterful of fragrant omelette; and though
each half buried a plate, it did not seem
enough.
“We’re goin’ to buy our provisions from
you, ma'am,” continued the Sheriff, talk-
29.


LOLA THE BEAR
ing as heartily as he ate. “We'll buy 'em
to-night, so’s to make a start afore bird-
song-in-the-mornin'. We can sleep in
the hay, s'pose, no objection?”
Mrs. Johnquest's eyes twinkled out of
the darkness.
“I do object to gre’t tramps a-hulking in
my hay-mow,” she replied. “But seeing
you don’t smok’, Josephus, and there
wouldn't 'a' been hay at all if you hadn't
cut it. . . .”
“Shoo-fly!” cried her benefactor, and
blushed rosy-pink through his tan. “Shoo-
fly! I guess my mother and you was
friends, wan't you? Onct?”
“We was always,” replied the widow,
quietly; and she paid no further embar-
rassing compliments to her guest.
When they had cleared the supper-table
and put the dishes away, it seemed very
late at night, though somewhere, from a
pond far off among the woods, a loon still
laughed and hooted over his evening joke.
Carrying the lamp with them, they moved,
3O.


BAD SILVER
all three together and the dog at heel,
round the orderly confusion of the widow's
room. A small glass case held fish-hooks,
thread, needles, bright-colored candies,
Woodstock pipes of heavy clay, linen fish-
lines reeled flat on cardboard. Alongside,
four barrels—pork, sugar, “Injun meal,”
and flour—stood ranged to form a counter,
over which dangled a row of home-knit
stockings. Two shelves, behind, exhibited
the gaudy labels of tinned fruit and vege-
tables. These, with plug tobacco, cards of
matches, a bin full of hard-tack, a jug of
sharp-scented vinegar, and a few odds and
ends, composed the “store”—a last humble
effort of commerce at the edge of the wil-
derness.
“I call that a rale rig-out,” declared
Josephus, when their supplies were bought.
“Good goods, all complete. Now, about
change. Here we are. And one dollar
more squares us.” He laid Mark's money
and his own on the glass case, then caught
up one bit of paper again, in disgust.
3I.


LOLA THE BEAR
“Foh! No! Gorry 'tis, another o’ them
Canada four-dollar bills! Consarn! When
will the Blue-noses outgrow the 'lucination
o’ printin’ four-dollar scripp Can you
break four dollars, ma’am?”
Mrs. Johnquest nodded complacently.
“I’ve got abundance o’ change,” she an-
swered, with a funny little air of pride.
“Great abundance. My last customer, him
that came Wednesday, broke a bill for me.
Little though I liked his looks. . . .”
She pulled a drawer from under the
shelves. In coming out, it rang a quiet and
rather musical bell, at the sound of which
the dog barked, and continued barking
until his mistress bade him stop.
“I learnt him to do that,” said the widow.
And the dog, hearing himself praised, beat
a tattoo upon the flour barrel with his tail.
“You always give your grandmother
warning, don't ye?”
Mark laughed.
“Nobody could rob your till, Mrs. John-
quest, with him round.”
32.


BAD SILVER
The old woman smiled.
“Tain't that so much,” she replied, as
she gave the Sheriff a handful of silver.
“It’s more to amuse me. Old folks, chil-
dren, fools, and dogs, a little goes a long
ways to entertain.—That right, Josephus?
—Oh, no. Everybody round here is
honest.” -
“Or tries to 'pear so.” The Sheriff cor-
rected her, while counting the change,
poking among the coins with a stubby fore-
finger. His big face glowed in the lamp-
light. Then, all at once, Mark saw his ex-
pression change, his gray eyes harden and
grow thoughtful, as if he had found some-
thing wrong, or met a disagreeable sur-
prise. But glancing up again, he spoke
as before, quite free and easy. “Don’t
happen to have any more half dollars, do
ye? I'd like to keep some on hand, if you
could spare ‘em.”
The widow peered into her open till.
“No. Not there, least. I’ll go look in-
side my bedroom.”
33.


LOLA THE BEAR
“Thank ye,” said the Sheriff.
He waited until she had gone into the
other room of the house, where they heard
her strike a match before shutting the
door. Then a strange thing happened.
The Sheriff made a sudden gesture, com-
manding silence and secrecy.
“Look here, Mark,” he whispered.
“Don’t you talk. Don't say a word.
Listen.”
From the silver pieces in his hand
he chose two half-dollars. These—after
pocketing the rest—he held close to the
lamp.
“See anything?” he inquired, still under
his breath. “Quiet. I don’t want her to
know. She'd be for takin' them right back,
and she can’t afford it.”
Mark stared, but saw nothing, except
the fact that Hardy was much excited by
two ordinary coins.
“May not be. But . . . You listen.”
Balancing one half-dollar on his finger-
tips, Josephus lightly struck it with the
34.


LOLA THE BEAR
was sitting carelessly over at the table
when Mrs. Johnquest opened the door.
“I can’t find another one!” she com-
plained, with disappointment. “Not one!
I am awful sorry, Josephus.”
The Sheriff yawned and stretched, as
though more than half asleep. Mark, see-
ing those yawns, felt almost that he him-
self lately had been dreaming.
“It don’t make no odds, ma'am.” Hardy
appeared to have forgotten the errand he
had sent her on. “Not the least odds.” He
roused himself with an effort. “So you
'ain't had company but us two since last
week, I understand?”
The widow sat down in her corner and
folded her arms again, to enjoy this rare
treat of conversation.
“Company?” Her eyes snapped. “I
call you company, but I don't him! A cus-
tomer, he was. And a tough customer,
too.”
“That a fact?” inquired Mr. Hardy.
“Didn't like him, then, I guess?”
36.


BAD SILVER
“Like him? Say not!” their hostess re-
torted. “He’d been drinking, to begin
with. A mean-looking fellow, fit to sell
rum to an Injun. Stranger, he was. Least,
I never saw him before. A red-headed
fellow with one eye, and that eye terrible
mean.”
“A river-driver, p'raps,” mumbled the
Sheriff, nodding drowsily.
“River-driver, this time o' year?” Mrs.
Johnquest laughed aloud. “Josephus, you
better go to bed. You don't know high
water from drowth, nor river-driving from
snow-sledding, this very minute. I coun-
sel you to go make up your sleep, before
your head falls on the floor.”
Hardy yawned again, and rose reluc-
tantly.
“You’re right,” he drawled. “Come on,
Mark. Let’s tumble in for an early start.”
They gathered their bundles of pro-
vision, and bidding Mrs. Johnquest a good
night, went out under the stars. Crickets
were singing everywhere down the field,
37.


BAD SILVER
The Sheriff groaned.
“Think of cheatin' a poor old woman
with bad silver.”
Mark suddenly understood; and with a
bunch of dry clover-blossom for a pillow,
lay thinking, as he was bidden to do. It
was a nasty, perfidious bit of low cunning;
he shared his companion's anger and dis-
gust. So he thought, and dozed, and
thought again; until the snores of the
mare, the trill of crickets, and the per-
fume of hay became lost altogether among
stars that faded beyond the barn-door,
glimmering.
39.


CHAPTER III
LOLA
“BIRD-song in the morning” was not just
one of Hardy's phrases. Mark dreamed of
music, woke with music in his ears, and
sitting up, wondered where he had come to
life. The dry, sweet smell of the hay-mow
presently told him. By the darkness, it
should have been midnight; or so he
thought until, looking roundabout in be-
wilderment, he found that the music came
pouring through the barn-door along with
a cloud of morning mist. He had never
known that birds could utter a sound so
magically various, of such volume; it was
not harmony, but something better, a
confusion of mounting notes, calling, an-
Swering, and interweaving. It was only
birds in the widow’s orchard. It seemed
a heavenly orchestra tuning before the
4O.


LOLA
vas canoe, lying bottom-up on a pair of
cedar trestles. He dropped his bundles,
ran round her, thumping and inspecting,
then in his great arms lifted her bodily and
carried her through a gap among the
leaves, where a bank of denser mist swal-
lowed them both, man and canoe.
“Fetch on your cargo, boy!” his voice
called.
Mark, obeying, almost fell down a rocky
shore. Hardy caught and saved him, with
a laugh. They stood beside the canoe,
which lay half grounded, half floating, on
a dark brown water covered with round
cakes and curds of white morning foam.
Beyond her, a blankness of gray-green fog
moved in the same direction with the
clotted foam, but somewhat more quickly.
This was the river.
“Get aboard careful,” said the Sheriff.
“Don’t hop round.”
Mark climbed into the canoe properly,
and knelt, ready to use the bow paddle.
The Sheriff chuckled.
43.


LOLA THE BEAR
“I take it all back. You’ve been there
before like a Mohawk.”
He stowed the last bundles neatly,
shoved off, and before sitting down, sent
the Old Girl with one powerful curved
stroke gliding up against the current.
“Paddle jest enough to warm you,” he
advised, “but don’t try puttin' forth your
He-curlean stren'th. Mind you been sick.
Go easy. Now I’m a-goin’ to talk all the
time, and holla, and carry on loud, so’s any-
body passin’ down river can hear us and
sing out.”
With that, paddling steadily, he began
to sing “The Year of Jubilo”; then let forth
several whoops and catamount-calls, which
were echoed along the unseen boundaries
of the fog, close by; then fell to narrating
a long nonsense-legend of the border log-
ging-roads,-how Tommy Cody, a famous
thin man, fell through a sled-stake hole
and was lost in the snow. Mark listened
or not as he chose. His work as bow pad-
dler seemed light and pleasant. There
44.
s º


The mist, like smoke in a draft,
blew faster and faster in their faces.





LOLA
though. I want to see if Lola’s to home.
If he is, you and me part company, boy. I
must go up the main branch and . . . and
inquire about your father there. Lola,
he'll take you up the east branch; so doin',
we waste no time nor lose our pains, ye
see; and the likelihood of mucklin’ on to the
Judge is jest about doubled. Thribbled, I
should say, for Lola makes three of us, if
not more.”
Mark saw that the plan was good, but
still he did not welcome it. To leave the
Sheriff, was to leave an old friend. Some-
how the notion of travelling through these
woods with a stranger made the expedition
seem far more uncertain than before, the
chance of success more doubtful and re-
mote. He said nothing, however, and
when his friend commanded him to cease
paddling “for fear of bein’ overdone,” he
obeyed, and sat quiet, rather downcast.
They had travelled a long way up and
up the slow current, when he was sur-
47.


LOLA THE BEAR
prised to hear the Sheriff answer the very
thoughts he had kept secret.
“No, sir. Nor I don’t want to leave you,
neither. But there it is. The river’ll come
to a fork, soon. We must divide, and
cover the country all to onct. I’ll be back
with you inside o’ three days. And you'll
find Lola good company.”
“How did you know,” cried Mark,
astounded, “when I wasn’t talking?”
Josephus laughed. His paddle dipped
and dripped a few times before he spoke
again.
“Talk ain’t the only thing,” he answered.
“Sometimes when a man keeps still, you
can foller him all the better.”
Mark pondered on that saying. It was
a truth he had never known, a new lesson
to be learned; and in the noonday calm of
woods and river, where nothing sounded
but the plash and trickle of the paddle, he
sat learning it deeply, over and over.
Early in the afternoon, they slid forth
on a little bay or widening bend, where the
48. -


LOLA
current divided to follow on either hand a
bank of tawny meadow-grass, while in
midstream rose abruptly a dark, bold, nar-
row hill, covered with pine woods. Like
the bow of a high ship, this evergreen hill
clove the river in two.
“Here we are,” Hardy declared. “Part-
in’ of the waters. Main branch goes up to
the left; east branch to the right.”
He steered into the east branch, where
shadow and sunlight by turns poured over
them. Soon afterward he called, in a tone
of satisfaction:
“There! The Luck's with us. Do you
See her?”
He pointed with his glittering paddle
blade.
Underneath a slant pine bough, and
drawn half out of water on a pebble beach,
there rested the long gray body of a birch
canoe. Dingy and worn, but graceful, she
bore along her gunwale a rough ornamen-
tal drawing, scratched into the brown of
the bark; at the bow, a sign somewhat like
49.


LOLA THE BEAR
the figure four upside down; amidship,
men shooting deer, women running from
a dog or bear; and at the stern, a long name
in sprawling letters.
“Nattaweckoeg,” read the Sheriff.
“‘The Sea Rider’ is her name. Well she
earned it, too. That birch has tasted salt
water all the ways from Point Lepreaux
down beyond Cape Cod.—Which some
folks would be skeered to do in a three-
masted schooner. Lola’s bo’t she is, the
Nattaweckoeg.”
So saying, he brought the canvas flank
of his “Old Girl” alongside the birch canoe,
and stuck his paddle into the river-bottom.
“Ah, wa-wa-wal” he shouted. “O Lolo
Lola!”
The pine woods, above, echoed like an
empty house.
Hardy shouted again.
The shout went echoing upward as be-
fore among the pine trees. Then came
silence. Mark could have sworn they were
alone; the loneliness troubled him, for he
50.


LOLA
thought that somehow in this place where
nobody lived, his father might have met
almost any kind of misadventure. Then a
sound as of a light wind stirred some
leaves; the bushes parted; and by the roots
of the overhanging pine trees a strange
man stood and looked down upon them
gravely, as if he had been standing there all
the time.
“Hallo, Lola,” said the Sheriff.
“Joseepha,” replied the strange man.
He was very strange indeed, yet also
very commonplace—a drooping figure,
from head to foot as brown as a tree-trunk.
His broad face, calm almost to the point of
stupidity, was brown and wrinkled; so
were his old shirt, his faded, rusty trousers,
his oil-tanned moccasins. There appeared
no other color about the man, except in his
eyes, which were glistening black, and in
the handkerchief—a stringy piece of blue
cotton—which hung knotted below his
throat.
“Lola,” inquired the Sheriff, “can you
5.I.


LOLA THE BEAR
take this boy up the east way a piece for
me? He wants to find his father, Judge
Boswell. Have you run acrost the Judge,
maybe?”
“No,” said Lola, in a quiet murmur de-
void of interest. “I hain’t. Um. Yea-ah.
Tha’s so.”
He spoke as to himself, and began look-
ing slowly up and down the stream, with
mild, unexpectant eyes.
“Well,” began Hardy once more, after
long waiting. “Will you take the boy up
as fur, say, as Red Logan? We're kind o'
jealous the Judge may ha’ got lost.”
He explained carefully the nature and
reason of their search. The brown man
stood motionless, like a sleepy animal, in
brown chequered sunlight under the pines.
He could not have listened. His face ex-
pressed a far-off meditation upon some
general subject, perhaps the weather.
“Um. Jesso,” he droned.atlast. “What's
the boy's name?” -
52.


LOLA
“Name's Mark,” replied the Sheriff.
“And I tell ye. . . .”
Lola began staring thoughtfully at the
evergreen branches overhead.
“They's a crow's nest up there,” he re-
flected, aloud. “All gone now, they be.
Some folks is foolish. Yea-ah. Some folks
says young crows hain't good eatin’.
White woman donno how to cook, mebbe.
Um. Guesso.” With eyes turned still
aloft, he added: “You got a loomerum
tea-kittle?”
Mark thought this question might be ad-
dressed to the pine needles, or the departed
crows, until he heard Sheriff Hardy an-
swering for him.
“No, he don't carry any such article.”
“You,” continued Lola, turning to ex-
amine the top of another tree, “you got a
loomerum tea-cups?”
“No,” replied Mark, wondering.
“Or mebbe,” said the Indian, over his
shoulder, “five hund’ed dollar gun, she
pump the shot so fast a bird hain’t got no
53.


LOLA THE BEAR
chanst? And readin'-book, mebbe, for tell
me what to do?”
“No,” Mark repeated.
Lola sighed, and turned to face them
O11Ce 11101’e.
“Last feller hed,” he stated mournfully.
“Um. Yea-ah. Last feller he come fºrm
city. Yeller mus-tash. Rich man. Sun-
burn keeped him awake all night. Ast
questions. Hardware store fer to carry;
hund’ed pound bags; fancy hatchet, no
cuttin' aidge. Tha’s so. He ast me ques-
tions, then knowed better 'n what I tolt
him. Yea-ah. Gimme headache, that fel-
ler. Guess I don’t take nobody agin. No.”
The Sheriff burst out laughing.
“Mark ain’t that kind,” he cried. “You
try him. You see.” And he added many
strange words in an unknown tongue.
The Indian turned his steady bright eyes
upon Mark. A slow grin flickered across
his wrinkled cheeks, and faded. Mark
saw that he was being joked about, and
laughed.
54.


LOLA THE BEAR
as they parted company. “Remember the
boy's been sick, Lola. Take care of him.
Good luck to ye. So long!”
He waved his paddle, and was lost be-
hind a jutting pine bough.
Lola, without effort, sent his long birch
flying up the eastern river.
“Um. Yea-ah,” he grumbled. “Guess
you'd like to see the Juds. Mebbe.”
Something in his tone gave Mark a new
hope, an access of confidence which was
needed sorely now that the Sheriff had
gone.
“You think you can find him?” asked the
boy.
“Kin if he's alive,” came Lola’s answer;
and the words, though grim, sounded
honest and encouraging, like the speech of
a man who would rather do than promise.
The Sea Rider went sliding without a
ripple through reach after reach of wood-
land, all empty, where nothing else moved
but the crinkling flow of the water, and
high summer clouds that towered like
56.


LOLA
snowy Alps afloat in the sunshine, with
deep reflections whitening the river.
“You hain't got any them a loomerum
tea cups?” inquired the Indian. “Glad you
hain’t. They scalt my lips nigh off my
teeth. Um. Yea-ah. Tha's right. Your
father says only t'other day. . . .”
He broke off with a grunt. A half mile
or so later, he mumbled, as if in dis-
pleasure:
“I hain’t got learnin’. But I got good
head for remember, me. Your father the
Juds, he don't carry no high-tone rubbage
int’ the woods. Tha’s what I started fer to
say. No, sir. Your father, he's the mos’
best man ever live!”
Not only the confusion of these words,
but some trick of Lola's voice—a crafty
note which was intended to deceive and
reassure—caused Mark to give a look
backward. It was a glance, no more; but
in that glance he caught Lola’s brown face
as though unmasked. Doubt and anxiety
worked in every wrinkle. No wonder the
57.


CHAPTER IV
HARDEIACK POND
“I DON'T wan’ nobody to run pas’ us in the
dark,” said Lola. “Tha's why we're
a-goin’ quick. Yea-ah. Listen them
fallses.”
'A noise like that of rushing wind had
risen beyond the trees, and now, drawing
nearer, became gradually the full roar and
hiss of tumbling water.
“We’re a-gona camp there, right on top
the carry.”
Lola had regained his composure, and
spoke in a voice friendly enough, though
pitched high above the rumble of the falls;
and when at last the Sea Rider came within
view of a tossing white wall and slid into
a shower of fine spray, he turned her bow
toward the right bank and brought her to
land.
60.


HARDHACK POND
back to the fire. “I guess you was got the
makin's of a feller.”
Presently he added:
“You think I was a liar. Didn' ye?”
“I never said just that,” Mark answered.
“Mm,” grunted the other, and ate in
silence. After a while, looking round him
with a ruminant air, he made a long-con-
sidered assertion.
“I hate lyin’,” said he, “worse 'n a Bab-
tis’ minister hate rum. Yea-ah. Tha’s
right. I’m a Roma Cathlic, me. Tha’s the
aligion I belongs to. I hain’t got learnin’.
But I got a good head.” He pondered a
while. “I kin tell you when Easter come.”
And he named the date—correctly, so far
as Mark knew. “Some folks reads it on a
book, but I keeps it in ma head. I kin tell
when the month comes in, and I kin tell
when the month goes out. Got good head
for remember, me. Tha’s kind o' feller I
am.”
He rose, carried off the spoons in the
empty dish, and disappeared to wash them
63.


HARDHACK POND
“Don’t you ast no questions,” said Lola
to the night, “an' I don’ tell you no lies.”
Mark remembered afterward that he
woke more than once in vague alarm, but
always dimly to see, through the ruddy
gloom of the camp-fire, a drooping figure
that stood and listened or moved about like
a slow, uneasy animal. He knew Lola was
on guard. He fell asleep again.
They started early next morning, “car-
ried” round the snowy tumult of the falls,
took the river again, and did not pause for
breakfast until the sun was high. Then, as
they sat in a warm, quiet clearing among
alders, an odd thing happened.
Lola had produced a very old brown box,
or canister, of birch bark, which was made,
he said, by his grandmother Hannah Nep-
tune. It contained maple sugar. They
were sharing a lump of this delicacy, when
from somewhere a wasp came buzzing and
lighted on Lola’s portion. The Indian
brushed away the intruder, but it returned
again and again.
65.


HARDHACK POND
overhung the water, or gave way to open
marsh-land; long grasses lay straining
half afloat, rising and sinking gently in the
slow brown current; and at last there
seemed no current whatsoever, but only a
labyrinth of stagnant pools, bordered with
wild meadow-hay. -
“Now you show me,” said Lola, with a
provoking chuckle, “now show me Dead-
water Brook. She's here. We got to go
up Deadwater Brook. Where is she?”
Mark tried his best, looking everywhere
about, to find the likeness of a brook. The
birch canoe lay motionless, surrounded by
meadow banks, above which gleamed the
empty sky, and under which lay nothing
but a margin of mud, pierced with mus-
quash holes. Here and there along the
ooze, a litter of pearly blue clam-shells told
where a musquash had eaten his fill.
“I don’t see any opening,” said Mark.
But he continued to search, for into his
head returned a saying of Sheriff Hardy's,
how Deadwater Brook wriggled in “so
67.


LOLA THE BEAR
black and still that everybody takes her for
a swamp-hole.” He looked again and
again, carefully. There could not be an
opening in that marsh.
“Oh!” he cried, suddenly. “Is it there?”
And he pointed to a string of lazy bub-
bles gliding imperceptibly from under mat-
ted grasses.
Lola, for the first time during their
cruise, gave a laugh.
“Boy, you got an eye like a Micmacſ”
With that, he sent the canoe flying to-
ward the bubbles. Mark dodged, and felt
the meadow-grass brush over him as it
parted to let them go rustling through, like
men burrowing into a hay-mow.
“There!” growled Lola, when they slid
into sunlight again. “I guess you hain't
no fool.”
They had found the mouth of the secret
brook. The canoe floated on a little stream
lost among tall grasses, a stream as black
and turbid as tea-grounds, and so dead that
cobwebs and leaf-dust covered the surface
68.


HARDHACK POND
with a dry scum. All afternoon they pad-
dled through the windings of this dreary
creek, until they reached a place of trees
and rocks where the water seemed to flow.
Soon afterward, passing among the giant
silver-gray bodies of fallen pines, they
stole forth on a lake lighted by the sunset.
“I don't say nothin’,” observed Lola.
“Here's she's Hardhack Pon’. Mebbe
we’ll found somebuddy here. Mebbe not.
I hain't say nothin'. Yea-ah. Don' you
fergit that.”
Hardhack Pond lay spread before them,
bright in the centre, dark round the west-
ern edges—a tranquil, tiny lake where
nothing moved but green reeds among the
jumbled granite boulders of the shore. An
eagle flew over, winging high, as Mark
and the Indian rested. That seemed a sign
of loneliness. But while the long birch,
with way still on her, went lapping through
pickerel weed and the pads of water-lilies
closed for the night, both man and boy
made exclamation.
69.


LOLA THE BEAR
“Smoke! Yea-ah!”
“I think—I think we’ve found him!”
They nodded at each other, and began
paddling once more.
Eastward, from behind an evergreen
point, thin smoke curled into the upper
region of the sunlight, and drifted inland
among pines.
“Yes, sir!” cried Mark, exulting.
“We’ve found him.”
It seemed a race, but yet a long, slow
race, until they could round the point.
There, in a little cove deeply hidden by the
pines, stood the camp from which the
smoke went mounting—a gray hut, close
above the pond, with open door facing the
full western light. It was not, however,
the retreat of a single fisherman. The hill-
side bank and the shade of the pine boughs
appeared, at a first glance, to be crowded
with people. Three men were bending
busily over a fire, while a fourth man
lounged by the shanty door. Their figures
were all gilded by the sunset, like the red
70.


LOLA THE BEAR
Meanwhile the fourth man, a tremen-
dous lanky fellow in blue overalls and a
gray cloth hat, came slouching down to-
ward the water.
“Here, you!” he cried, in a loud, forced,
nasal voice. “Who sent for you round
here?”
He halted above them on the bank, peer-
ing from under his hand.
“You kin clear out,” he added, sourly.
“What ye after, anyway?”
Lola returned a civil answer.
“We was a-lookin' for Juds Boswell,”
he murmured. “Tha’s all. Jest a-lookin'
fer Juds Boswell. You hain't seen him,
s’pose, nowheres, hev ye?”
The lanky man stood still for a moment,
as if thinking what to answer.
“Naw,” said he. “I hevn't, nor I don’t
want to. You go on yer ways. We can’t
feed nor house the whole township.–No, I
tell ye. There ain't been no such person
round this camp.”
The speaker lowered his hand. As the
72.


HARDHACK POND
light disclosed his face, Mark started in
surprise. This man glowered at them with
a single eye. Its mate was but a pouch of
shriveled eye-lids, inflamed and pitiful, like
a scar. Under the cloth hat-brim his hair
shone red as copper in the sunset.
“He’s the one,” cried Mark, carried
away by indignation, “he’s the one that
cheated the widow!”
The man’s face went suddenly pale.
“Whats’ that?” he snarled, and made a
step forward. “What did I hear? You
say that agin'!”
But Mark was too excited to reply, for
he had recognized something more about
that red head.
“Oh,” he stammered, “you, you, you’re
wearing. . . .”
The other cut him short with a wave of
the arm.
“Clear out, the pair of ye! We don't
want no kids a-yallopin’ round us, nor no
blame dirty Injuns prowlin’ about for to
steal.”
73.


LOLA THE BEAR
At these words, Lola rose in the canoe
and very deliberately stepped ashore. Mark
saw trouble coming. He had no time,
however, to be afraid. Out he jumped on
the rocks, to follow Lola; and he would
have done so had ten such adversaries
barred the way; for this red-haired Cy-
clops was wearing a thing he had no right
to. Mark knew the cloth hat for his
father's—the shapeless old gray head-
gear which Judge Boswell always wore
a-fishing.
74.


LOLA THE BEAR
his voice. He stepped forward between
the wranglers.
“Where,” he squeaked, “where did you
get my father's hat?”
Chubbuck scowled both with his eye and
with the red-rimmed socket.
“Git out,” said he, curtly. “It’s one I
bought my own-self. Never seen your
haley old father. Git out.”
Then Mark recovered his speech.
“It’s not true!” he shrilled. “You have!
You give me that hat!”
Why he should so desire the hat, as a hat,
he never stopped to think and never knew;
for Chubbuck suddenly swung forward,
and with one bony paw made a sweep at
his head. Mark dodged, but caught the
slant edge of the blow, and went rolling
into a patch of sweet-fern. He was up al-
most at once, dazed and blubbering with
fury. The first thing he saw was Lola’s
hand grasping behind Lola's back, clutch-
ing at a belt, a sheath, and the knife
which had killed the wasp. The next thing
78.


He went head foremost against a pair of
blue overalls, scised them, tackled and fell.





THE CAMPERS ON HARDHACK
Your father said to me, he was a-goin’—
Dunno. He wa’n’t here. I hain’t seen
him.” -
Chubbuck and the swarthy mutes gath-
ered morosely behind him. They made an
ill-favored group to face the glowing sun-
set. One of them muttered something.
“Yes,” cried Tommy Cody, and nodded.
“You—you—you look a-here, boy.” He
put on a feeble air of authority. “You
gimme back this gen’leman's pistol. He
says you begun it. Boys got no right to go
round takin' people's firearms away. Don't
belong to ye, neither. You give the gen’le-
man back his gun.”
Lola had neither moved nor spoken, but
remained there, quiet, suspicious, bright-
glancing, with knife in hand.
“Don’ you do it!” he now cried, sharply.
“Muckle on, aholt of 'er. Pass 'er to me.
Yea-ah. I’ll keeps 'er.”
With that, shifting the knife to his left
hand, the Indian softly put forth his right
83.


LOLA THE BEAR
and took the long, nickle-plated pistol. At
once the four campers drew back, recoiling.
“I guess,” murmured Lola, thought-
fully, “we got the upper hands of 'em.
Yea-ah. Um. Tha’s so.”
A long silence fell. Tiny lake waves
plashed and chuckled below, under the rest-
ing Sea Rider's flank of birch.
“Dern the whol’ business!” growled
Chubbuck; and turning away in disgust,
he went and sat on a stump by the fire,
which had sunk neglected into a broad heap
of coals. “Dern the whol’ muckin' busi-
ness!”
Clutching his red hair with tremulous
fingers, he stared at the half-burnt cedar
tripod which straddled the fire-bed. Like
many another coward, this one-eyed man
could carry and flourish fire-arms, but not
stand up bare-handed before an enemy.
The other two men retreated presently to
where he sat; and after a few more vague,
foolish, distracted questions, Tommy Cody
84.


THE CAMPERS ON HARDHACK
sidled over to join them. They held a
muttering council round the fire.
Mark looked inquiringly at his friend.
Lola stood silent and watchful, as before;
but now he slowly gave a nod, which signi-
fied, better than words, that they two were
the acknowledged masters of the camp.
Meanwhile he sheathed his knife, and stuck
the naked pistol under his belt, conspicu-
ously in front.
“Wait,” he murmured. “Jes’ wait. See
what they says to us nex’.”
And so the Indian began wandering
about, ambling onward a few steps, return-
ing, then halting dead to stare at the
ground, or the tree-tops, or out across the
sunset lake; always with the same vacant
thoughtfulness, like a melancholy bear.
Once he stooped, took up a white pebble
from the ground, stared at it aimlessly, and
put it in his pocket. As for Mark, he now
spied under a bush—where it lay kicked
aside and forgotten—the precious object of
85.


LOLA THE BEAR
their quarrel, the gray hat. He pounced on
it, then ran to Lola in triumph.
“It is my father's hat,” he announced.
Stamped on the inner band were the let-
ters “R.B.”—the initials of Mr. Richard
Boswell.
“Yea-ah,” said Lola, looking wise.
“Tha’s right. Pfer Juds and R fer Bos-
well. Yea-ah. We got 'im.”
Mark, as he brushed the hat free of dust
and pine-needles, felt his spirits greatly
rise. To see and handle this shabby old
piece of gray cloth, brought him, by some
Queer fancy, near to his father, close, as it
were, on the missing footsteps.
The voices round the camp-fire became
audible; all four men were arguing at once;
and though Chubbuck's gleaming head
wagged stubbornest, he suddenly ripped
out a final oath, and squirting tobacco juice
among the coals, sat like a man overcome,
hang-dog and sour.
“Hev it your own fool way, then,” he
sneered.
86.


THE CAMPERS ON HARDHACK
“Go on, Tommy,” urged the two dark
men, with foreign gestures. “Go on,
Tommy. Tell 'em.”
His little yellow face more puckered
than ever, his thin frame still more with-
ered, Tommy Cody drew near, hesitating,
shambling, as though his pipe-stem legs
failed under a heavy burden of doubt and
Ca1 C.
“Look, boys,” he hailed, with a false
note of cheeriness. “Le’s us hev some talk.
Us fellers don’t pick no quar’ls. Sure not.
Us fellers don't want to fly at one t'other's
thro’ts, as the old sayin’ is. Look a-here.”
Giving Lola a wide berth, he passed to
the other side of Mark, and laid his arm
affectionately over the boy’s shoulder. It
was a feeble arm and a quaking.
“Now, son,” he began, in a low, hurried
voice. “Now, son. You hark. I ain’t
a-goin’ to tell no lies. We did see your
father. You know me, Mark. Everybody
does. Your father and me’s old friends.
He's always good to me. Had I but fol-
87.


THE CAMPERS ON HARDHACK
he told me to tell you he tolt me, he was
goin’ furder in, deeper, to fish. Well!
Didn' I?” Tommy was now blubbering
outright. “You know me, son. The Judge
he knows me. Nobody says thes any harm
in Tommy Cody, do they? No. Never
was inside a jail or a lock-up house in my
life, 'cept maybe two-three times, Fourth
o' July, Queen's Birthday, likes o' that.
Was I? No. Well, there now!”
Somewhat bewildered by this fervent
plea, Mark made no answer. It was Cody
who continued their discourse, bending
down as though to whisper in Mark's ear.
“Now, listen,” said he, and glanced
timidly back toward the camp-fire. “You
go take the Judge his hat. She's his; you
was right; and we give her up to ye free
and fair. He left us that hat by accident,
kind of. He'll be wantin’ her, too. And
you tell the Judge I never picked no fight.
Tell him us fellers ain't doin’ aught but
. . . Tell him the fishin' ain't no good
here; better stay where he is. Like a good
89.


LOLA THE BEAR
boy, now, you go carry your father’s hat
to him.”
Mark laughed.
“Where is he, then? We'll go fast
enough. I don't want anything better.”
Tommy drew a long breath, in relief.
All the wrinkles in his little face turned
suddenly from care-worn crowsfeet to the
strangest net-work of smiles. He seized
Mark by the arm.
“Come down here,” he cried, briskly.
“”Tain't fur. Come on down, Lola. I kin
show ye. 'Tain't no distance.”
It was comical to see how openly the
poor, frail simpleton rejoiced at getting rid
of his visitors, as he hurried them down
the bank to their canoe.
“Spang over there,” said he, pointing
across the lake, which was now a bottom-
less gulf of amber light. “Round the fust
point, then open up Loon Cove, so, and
there's the mouth o' the brook, where your
father went.” Tommy poured out a stream
of tedious instruction. “Can't miss the
90.


THE CAMPERS ON HARDHACK
brook; plumb afore your nose; if she was
a bear, she'd bite ye. Good-bye, boys.
Glad to seen ye. So long. Good luck to ye
both.”
Lola, by a motion of his hand, sent Mark
aboard the Sea Rider. With a gloomy,
suspicious air, he followed, and shoved out
the canoe through a rattle of parting reeds.
“Goo' bye,” he grunted; and under his
breath, as he began to paddle,_*Humph!
Foolish. Yea-ah.”
The shore quickly receded. Tommy's
grin and fatuous waving hand were
blurred by the green lines of the reeds.
Mark had one backward glimpse of the
pine grove, the cabin, locked inhospitably,
and the morose trio staring from that syl-
van fireplace, where a faint bluish twist
of smoke mounted among glowing red-
barked pillars. Then, like a dream, all the
evergreen hill floated away into distance.
Lola and he faced a world of primrose-
yellow flame, high in air, deep in water,
both elements forming one limitless glory,
9I.


LOLA THE BEAR
save where the western woods divided
them by a bar black as midnight, a double
fringe of dark spruce pinnacles, half up-
right, half inverted.
“What can those men be doing?” said
Mark. “That's a queer camp.”
Cool shadows surrounded them. The
canoe slid under the edge of evening, close
to land, round the point, and into a cove of
dark-green water. A mink, taken unaware
on the shore, dove silently under Mark's
paddle-blade like a brownish streak, no
sooner guessed at than gone.
“Dunno,” answered Lola, at last. “They
didn’ mean us fer to know. It hain’t fish
they's after. No-sir.”
A moment later he ceased paddling.
“Turn roun’,” said he.
Mark did so. The birch drifted on
through dark-green twilight.
“See,” muttered the Indian, fumbling in
his pocket, “what I founded.”
And he drew out that white object, like
92.


POPPLE HOUSE
He scrutinized the clean round rim of the
impression. It was milled. Within its
half circle appeared a fragmentary device,
—the profile of a woman's head.
“Why!” he exclaimed. “Why, Lola!
It’s a cast!” Staring through twilight, he
wondered why the Indian did not share
the thrill of his discovery. “A cast, I tell
you, or a mould! For making money.
They’re coining half-dollars in that camp
over there. And Chubbuck passed them
on the Widow Johnquest, when he was
drunk, in her shop. You wait till Sheriff
Hardy catches him!”
Lola began paddling, like a man who
had other interests.
“Tha’s so?” he inquired, vaguely.
“Makin' money, hey? I heerd tell o' that,
too; never seen it done afore.” He steered
the canoe toward a gray granite beach.
“Time we was buildin' a hovel and gittin'
our supper to eat.” -
Mark sat astonished at the sight of such
barbarous indifference.
95.


LOLA THE BEAR
“But Lola,” he cried, “that’s what
they're doing, those fellows! That's why
they drive away visitors, and no wonder.
Don't you understand? They're coiners—
counterfeiters. They're making money.”
The Indian merely hooked his paddle be-
tween two rocks, and brought his craft
ashore.
“Good fer them,” he murmured. “Good
fer them. Some folkskin. Wisht I could.
Now you climb out, an' we'll cook the sup-
per.”
He would listen to no further explana-
tion. As they worked side by side in the
dusk, cut poplar saplings and laid boughs
to build a leafy shelter, Mark went on talk-
ing indeed, but found his words entirely
wasted. Lola was hungry, and said so.
Nor would he speak further on any sub-
ject, until their house for the night stood
ready under the stars, and a fire was leap-
ing before it, and supper smoked in a dish
on the ground. They sat down side by side,
facing the fire, beyond which the bottom
96.


POPPLE HOUSE
of the canoe, up-turned, glistened wet like
crystal in a patch of grass. All the cove
lay still and lost in darkness. The topmost
leaves of the living poplars pattered with a
sound as of tiny raindrops.
Lola ate heartily in silence; then stared,
musing, at the fire; then spoke in a mourn-
ful vein.
“How's folks make money, Mark? I
heerd white men talk, many's time, say—
‘So-'n-so, he's a-makin' money.’ ‘That
store, she's a-makin' money han’ over
fist.”—How's they do it?” He sighed.
“Machin’ry, mebbe. I seen sardines
a-makin' onctint’ the fact'ry. Um. Yea-ah.
They doos the money sort o’ same way,
spose. Like how the saw-mill make
aidgin's?”
“Something like,” replied Mark. “The
Government makes it in a kind of factory.
But these men over here—”
“Ho, no!” interrupted Lola, shaking his
head. “Gov’ment don’ make money, Mark.
You don'no. Gov’ment gits money. Gov'-
97.


LOLA THE BEAR
ment take it away fºrm other fellers.
Yea-ah. Gov’ment he take it, take the land
away, too; gives you a paper, mebbe, tha's
all. Man, name o' George Washton, he
was Gov’ment, he taken all this land away
on my father gran’father, promise to pay
him a slat o' money, hund’ed year ago.
Can't never do it. Too poor. Gov'ment
hain’t got none, Mark. You’s wrong.”
Mark, knitting his brows, tried to meet
this argument.
“Money,” he began, “is made in a
Mint.”
He had read about mints, but never seen
one; and while he expounded as best he
might, Lola laughed him to scorn.
“A mink?” said the Indian. “”Twas a
mink doved under us w'en we was a-turnin'
int’ this bay. You's tired. You's talkin’
foolish. They's a little money ketchin'
'em. And minks kin swim. But they
hain’t much else to minks.”
Mark tried again, and did somewhat bet-
ter. He talked earnestly, holding the
98.


POPPLE HOUSE
broken plaster cast so that both of them
could study it in the red firelight. Lola
scratched his ears, and thought, and
nodded once or twice.
“Now don’t you see?” Mark urged.
“What these fellows make is bad money!”
Lola’s face became a brown puzzle.
“Tha's so. Um. Likely,” he grumbled.
“Guess 'twould be kind o' bad. Tommy
Cody, he couldn' shave a hoop-pole ner fit
an axe-handle. An’ the Cock-eye, there,
he’d never make nothin’ straight. Yea-ah.
Guess tha's true. Guess their money would
be two botches an’ a bungle.”
Somehow, Mark felt, the right and
wrong of this affair were being overlooked.
“Why, Lola,” he cried, “it’s worse! It's
meaner. It’s low down. This red-head
man we fought, this Cock-eye, what do you
suppose?—he took things out of Mrs. John-
quest, the widow, her store! Things to eat
and wear. And the money he paid,
wouldn’t buy that poor old woman so much
99.


POPPLE HOUSE ......:::::::::::::::
“In the ole days, when we gits mad—”
He broke off, and pointed at the fire below
him. Voice, look, and gesture, made him
seem for the moment an apparition who
had stepped from the darkness, not of the
night behind him, but of an ancient and re-
vengeful past. “W’en we, our people, gits
mad at that kind o' man, we digs a pit-hole
in the groun’; an' we fills the pit-hole full
o’ hemlock bark; an' then we takes him, an’
burns him up in a hot fire, quick. Yea-ah!
Tha’s what we do, acause they desarves
it!”
He moved away, muttering. Mark saw
his dim shape pass back and forth in the
gloom by the water's edge. When he re-
turned, he came shuffling along, the same
dull, patient, downcast Lola of every day.
“We'll ketch up evens with 'em,” he de-
clared, quietly, and flung wood on the fire,
so that a great explosion of sparks burst
upward. “Um. Yea-ah. Now le’s us go
to bed, Mark. Don't cost ye nothin’ to
IOI.


- LOLA THE BEAR
board at Popple House. Tha's so. Hain't
it?”
As they lay down beneath a roof of
poplar leaves already wilting in the warm
firelight, Lola unbuckled his belt, to put
away the captured pistol and the sheath-
knife.
“It only shows ye, Mark,”—Yawning,
he moralized the day's event—“shows jes’
what I tolt ye. They couldn’git the upper
hands of us. Al’ays take yer knife-blade to
kill a wossip.”
So saying, he twisted himself into his
blanket, rolled over, shifted his feet a few
times, and began to snore. Mark lay
listening, with a complacent idea that he,
at his age, could stay awake longer than
this weathered old campaigner of the
woods.
“I must think what we ought to do,” he
told himself. “Lola is not very strong at
thinking.”
In this agreeable conceit, he watched the
firelight flicker across their ceiling—
IO2.


POPPLE HOUSE
peered along the misty confines of the
shore, he found with a bodily shock of sur-
prise that he stood there, in truth and in-
deed, alone.
The birch canoe was gone.
At first he remained gaping, doubtful of
his own eyes. It was incredible that his
friend Lola should have deserted him, like
a thief in the night. But it was true. The
wet grass by the shore sparkled silvery, ex-
cept where footprints darkened it in a line
of drenching, trodden sprays, and where
the canoe had left a dry pattern of her body
shaped like a giant willow leaf. Lola had
picked up the Sea Rider and vanished with
her into the smoky dawn.
“What struck the man?” thought Mark.
“Why should he sneak away like this?”
Following a first impulse, the boy set
forth to patrol the shore; but he soon came
to a halt, for everywhere the cold, wet soli-
tude wrapped him round, the same brown
edge of water simmered and steamed under
low-hanging fog.
IO5.


CHAPTER VII
THE DEVIL's KITCHEN
No good of any sort could come. Mark
pulled his blanket round his legs, and
waited, shivering. Wet and cold, alone in
a shadowy wilderness at that doleful morn-
ing hour when courage runs low, he found
cause to remember that he had left home
half-sick, anxious, and weaker than he was
willing to confess. The lake mist mourn-
fully shut him in with his forebodings.
Even the crow had gone from the fir-tops
yonder. Lola’s desertion wore a sinister
look.
“Suppose he fights those people at
camp?” thought the boy. “Indians like to
get even, they say. Somebody may be hurt
—or killed. It may be happening now.”
Whatever happened, he could only sit
there under his blanket and shiver, and be
IO8.


LOLA THE BEAR
canoe slid into the margin of brown water,
and the blurred figure of a man, lifting a
glossy paddle, stepped out on the granite
rocks. It was Lola.
“Hallo!” cried Mark.
The Indian climbed up toward the fire.
He came bare-handed and without a
weapon. His broad face was calm, his old
brown shirt covered with pearly seeds of
moisture.
“Mornin’,” he replied. “Woken too
soon, did ye? Start’n’ the fire. Tha’s
good.”
He stooped under the hovel, and dragged
out one of the food-bags.
“What happened?” said Mark.
“Nothin’,” Lola grumbled. “Where's
tea-kittle?”
Not before they were eating breakfast
did he offer to speak again.
“Rain. I kin smell them pon'lilies way
here, clean f’m other end the lake. Um.
Yea-ah. We're a-goin’ to git rain.”
Mark then grew conscious of what he
I IO.


THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
had been too fretful and busy to enjoy, a
cool fragrance of water-lilies. Now that
Lola mentioned it, all the woods and
waters breathed forth a faint, incompar-
able sweetness.
“Rain's a-comin’,” Lola nodded. “We
better put on more boughses, make the roof
tight.”
The mist had melted, so that the cove
lay clear and dark, a pool of mirrored
evergreen. When the two camp-mates
had chopped and laid on their house a
double thatching of poplar branches and
fir, the coming shower already marred that
mirror with delicate rings, widening
slowly. Lola brought ashore his canoe,
from which, before placing her upside
down, he took out his knife-belt and the
nickle-plated pistol.
“What did you do—with those?” Mark
ventured. “What happened?”
“Nothin’,” repeated his friend.
They took refuge under the hovel, as the
first great drops fell hissing into their
III.


LOLA THE BEAR
camp-fire. The perfume of far-off water-
lilies faded and was gone. Then suddenly,
with a plashing outburst, the rain drove
aslant the cove and transformed all to leap-
ing quicksilver.
“No,” murmured Lola. He sat watch-
ing the many-shafted downpour and the
bright drops dancing upward. “Nothin'
happened. Ijes’ wenta-huntin’—a-huntin'
fer a thing.”
“Did you find it?” asked Mark.
“Yea-ah, I guesso.” Lola’s eyes puck-
ered thoughtfully. “Guess I did. Mebbe.
W’en the rain hol's up, I’ll go show ye.
Then you kin see.”
This proposal was by no means wel-
CO1116.
“We ought not to waste time,” Mark
objected. “I want to go straight up the
brook.”
“Wha’ for?” growled Lola in displeas-
ure. “Wha' d'ye wan’ to do that for?”
“Because my father's up there, of
II 2.


THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
taken. Tell? The boy don't know noth-
ing to tell on us. Him and that Injun has
gone up the brook, as I was sayin’—”
“You!” sneered another voice. “You
always are a-sayin'! But what you say
wouldn't butter no parsnips.-The whol’
thing’s goin’ wrong. We can’t afford to
take resks.”
And while he spoke, out from withered
sumac bushes that crowned the granite
knoll, above, stalked the tall red-haired
man, with Tommy Cody shambling after.
They came from the woods on the right,
and now halted, barely ten feet away, in
full view against the darkening sky. Mark
would have dodged among the alders; but
at his first movement, Lola’s grip tight-
ened and held him powerless. Lola stood
like a piece of the rock.
“Well, well, mebbe. I don't set up to be
no great,” argued the scarecrow Tommy.
“You know best, dessay. All is, Judge
Boswell he don’t see nothing wrong. The
Judge and me is old friends. Guess the
II9.


THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN
a new discomfort; not that he was tired,
hot, excited, and wet from head to foot;
but that he had overheard something which
left him strangely ill at ease.
“The way they were speaking of father,”
he thought; “I don’t like it. They spoke
... almost . . . as if my father was here
—was one of them!”
A foolish thought; he brushed it aside.
But somehow it returned to pester him, as
he hurried after his guide among the
blighted sumacs. Swerving to the right,
whence their enemies had come, Lola went
silently along the “backbone” of the ledge,
until it curved abruptly downward, to over-
hang a small, gloomy ravine. Here all
was tumbled confusion,-immense gray
boulders piled on end, and wretched gray
saplings that tried to live, twisted from
under the rocks and straining leanly to-
ward the sky. Lola slipped down among
them like a cat. Heavily and cautiously,
Mark clambered from boulder to boulder.
“Now. I show ye. Um.” The Indian
I2 I.


LOLA THE BEAR
permitted himself to grin, briefly, but with
satisfaction. “Yeah-ah. This where they
keeps they money! Come quiet.”
At the bottom of this hollow, where they
stood together, a gurgling, runnelly sound
passed underfoot without ceasing. Deep
down, beneath the huge piled fragments of
granite, passed a brook. Unseen, buried
forever, it made as pleasant variable music
as if it were shining in the sun. With a
voice no louder than the Indian's, it caused
in that rocky waste a little rejoicing.
They listened for other sounds. None
came. Surely they stood alone with the
brook.
“Come stiddy.” Lola beckoned, then
started on, through a gap or natural gate-
way between high boulders. “You’ll see
um. Right there.”
He pointed into a sort of devil's kitchen,
or giant cellar pit among the rocks. But
even as he pointed, his arm dropped, and
he shrank back under the shadow of the
gateway. Mark stared past him.
I22.


CHAPTER VIII
INJUN MEDICINE
It was too bad to be true. The menacing
twilight, the bare granite boulders, the un-
canny gray saplings, combined to give this
place and this encounter a strange, dark,
colorless unreality; but after the first
shock of disbelief, Mark knew he stood
there confronting a fact, a hopeless fact
filled with terror. Here, then, was the end
of their search. This man, surprised,
guilty, caught with the vile cheat in his
very hand, was father.
“Oh,” said Mark, “I never thought you
would!”
He broke off, trembling so that he was
forced to lean against one of the gateway
rocks.
“Why!” exclaimed his father, in a queer
voice, between anger and alarm. “Why!”
I24.


INJUN MEDICINE
He slipped the tell-tale coins into his
pocket, and advanced. “What does this
mean?”
Richard Boswell was a very young man
for a judge; too young, some persons said,
too easy-going, boyish, and ready to laugh.
But now, as he came near, there was little
sign of ease or laughter. His quick blue
eyes had no merriment in them; his face,
sunburnt and rough with a blond stubble
of woodman's beard, was now exceedingly
grave. Lithe and springy, a rather dash-
ing figure in his old moleskin kit, he seemed
like a ready man turning at bay, greatly
upset, but rousing from a secret and dan-
gerous deed to face unwelcome discovery.
Unwelcome: that, to Mark, was the
hardest thought. His father stood there
alive and well—and was not glad to see
him. -
“Why, Mark! What's all this?” he de-
manded, sternly. “What on earth brought
you here?”
The invisible brook continued its trund-
I25.


LOLA THE BEAR
ling music underneath the boulders. Mark
found it a hateful sound to hear, as it went
on and on, tinkling high, gurgling low, a
mockery in this gray hollow of defeat.
“Evenin', Juds,” mumbled Lola, with
unshaken composure. “I brung 'im, tha's
all. Never tolt ’im a word. No. Jes’
brung’im. Howdy do, Juds.”
The Indian remained the only calm one
of the three. Mark had never before seen
his father so agitated, so alert, and dubious,
and painfully on guard. -
“How are you, Lola?” He answered
mechanically. Not once did his blue eyes
leave their study of Mark's face. Frown-
ing warily, they seemed to wonder how
much, or how little, the boy had happened
to see. “I wish,” he said, regretfully, “I
wish you could have chosen almost any
other time. What's wrong at home?”
“Nothing,” replied Mark, miserably. It
was not at home that the wrong lay.
“Then what made you come out here?”
“I thought you were lost.”
I26.


LOLA THE BEAR
His father came hurrying up the ledge.
“Look here, Marco Polo.” The familiar
nickname was like a sting. “I am glad to
see you, though you may not believe me.”
He paused; then, as Mark stood dogged
and silent, he continued: “It was the
wrong time, that’s all; the wrong time for
you to come here. I’m not free. Some-
thing—something worries me. I must see
it through.” His blue eyes were anxious
and evasive. “But I don't like the way you
look, my boy. Have you been ill?”
Mark told the same dull falsehood.
“I’m all right.”
Judge Boswell shook his head.
“Lola,” he said, and took Lola by the
arm. “Where are you camping?”
“’Cross Hardhack Pon’,” replied the
Indian. “Loon Cove. We builted a popple
house, fust p’int.”
“Good. That’s within reach.” The
Judge nodded. “Now, Lola; you take
charge of this chap, will you, until I come
for him? As if he were your own boy?”
I30.


INJUN MEDICINE
Lola thoughtfully scratched his cheek.
“Um. Yea-ah. Don’ let him git sick.
Mebbe.”
The Judge put both hands on Mark's
shoulders.
“My dear old Sober-sides,” he continued
quietly. “Do keep yourself well. Mind
what Lola tells you.” His bearded and
sunburnt face, even in that clouded gloom,
shone warm and loving. “I’ll come get you
inside the next twenty-four hours.” He
dropped his arms, and stood back. “Re-
member, don't tell anybody where you saw
me.” He seemed to wait for a reply.
“What?” said he. “You won’t shake hands
with your own dad?”
Mark reached forth and grasped his
father's hand.
“Don’t you fret about me!” he cried with
burning loyalty. “I’ll never tell a soul!”
“Of course you won't!” His father
patted him soundly on the back. “Now,
clear out! We mustn't be caught together.
And take good care of yourself! I'll come
I31.


LOLA THE BEAR
across the pond as soon as these—as quick
as ever this thing is finished—and we’ll go
home together. Good-bye, for the present.
Mind you watch him, Lola!”
With a parting nod and smile, the Judge
swung off along the granite mound, his
footsteps quick and springy and silent, like
the gait of a hunter who has no time to lose.
Once he looked back, still smiling, and
waved his hand. Then the black pines
swallowed up his lithe, drab figure and
bare yellow head. He was gone—toward
the money-makers’ camp.
“I tol’ye,” murmured Lola. “The Juds,
he's lookin' hearty. Hain't failed non’, has
he? Um. No. Didn't 'spect to found him
here. Thought he'd be odder place. All
same. We saved a journdey, ketchin’ him
half-way. Yea-ah.”
Mark paid no heed to what the Indian
was saying. As he crumbled to pieces an-
other red cockade from the sumacs, so all
his power of thought crumbled into pain
and weariness.
I32.


INJUN MEDICINE
“Well.” At last he stared about him in
the darkening woods,--a dreadful laby-
rinth where even the points of the compass
had lost their meaning. “Well, let's go
home.”
He started forward blindly.
“Here,” called his companion, in sur-
prise. “That hain't the way. You's got
turned roun', you. Come o' me. Foller
clos’.”
He tried to do so and, staggering down-
hill, made heavily after the shadow which
was Lola. Night overtook them in the cor-
duroy lane. He labored on, splashing
through water, tumbling over hummocks
of moss, rising and going forward, with
that obstinate, smothered perseverance
which one exerts in a dream. Lola went
too fast, much too fast. Lola flitted from
sight, somewhere ahead, and left him alone.
Mark neither called out, nor thought of
caring. He found nothing in his heart,
nothing in all the black wilderness, but a
kind of aching indifference. Walking, face
I33.


LOLA THE BEAR
foremost, into a tree-trunk, he fell as if
clubbed, sat up with blood streaming from
his nose, and then, crawling to his feet
again, marched on without a word. How
long the march was, or how far astray, he
never learned; but when after more down-
falls he tripped on a rotten log, Mark lay
still in a litter of wet touchwood and fra-
grant box-berry leaves.
The rest of that night passed in a daze,
half sleep, half consciousness. He remem-
bered weeping, though not for himself.
He remembered shivering, not with cold
but with fiery pains. Once in the darkness
a tiny wild beast came snuffling the ground,
until with a great sneeze of fright it
bounded backward and galloped off among
the leaves.
And then later, still in darkness, a man
was bending over him.
“Pooty way to do!” grumbled the man.
“Go lose the Juds' boy fer him. Pooty way
to do!”
It was Lola. He seemed to scold himself
I34.


INJUN MEDICINE
continually, first in English, then in some
unknown tongue.
Mark felt a pair of arms about him, tried
feebly to resist, then groaned and lay still.
He knew nothing more, except that the
arms were carrying him, that wet leaves
brushed his cheek, and that water was lap-
ping close to his ear, through the bottom of
a canoe. Afterward, long afterward, he
lay swaddled by a huge fire, blinking at the
withered leaves of the Popple House.
“I-gorry, boy,” said Lola's voice, “I-
gorry, didn'guess you was be so sick. No.
You wait. I’ll fixed the med-cine for ye.”
The voice was little and remote; so were
his own hands, little, light, far away; and
he himself, this fellow whose life somebody
had dreamed of, long ago, now shrank to
an atom in the darkness, only to grow and
swell, dizzily revolving till its motion filled
all space and strained against an outermost
boundary.
“I’ll die if that grows any bigger,” he
whispered. And then once more his being
I35.


LOLA THE BEAR
shrank and receded to a whirling pin-point.
“There!” he moaned. “It goes out. He's
dying.”
“No, you hain’t,” came Lola’s steady
answer. “Drink. Med’cine.”
The drink, scalding hot and thick as
gravy, tasted like all the herbs of the forest
—a bitter-sweet, nauseous mess. He swal-
lowed it only because he could not fight the
giver. Presently he found himself awake,
staring at the fire. Lola seemed very busy
there. Like some broad-faced brown
demon, the Indian toiled with a long forked
pole, shoving aside the logs, even while
they blazed. Mark closed his eyes; when
he next opened them, the fire burned at the
waters’ edge, removed there bodily, and
Lola was brushing away the last coals
from its former bed. Another doze fol-
lowed. Another dreaming glimpse re-
vealed a little cone of a hut standing where
the fire had stood. Hemlock bark, ever-
green boughs, and strips of white birch,
formed its patch-work walls.
I36.


INJUN MEDICINE
33
“Come, git in.” Lola was carrying him
toward the hut. “Crawl int' your sweat-
house. I’ll cure ye.”
A helpless bundle of blankets, Mark felt
himself lowered and thrust through a sort
of dog-hole. Insufferable heat surrounded
him at once. He tossed upon a fir bed,
under which the ground lay scorching.
“Let me out!” he stammered. “Let me
out! I can’t breathe!”
“Hesh up. I’ll cure ye,” Lola chuckled.
“Cure ye like a smok'd eel!”
Three times, desperately, Mark strug-
gled to creep forth from that oven. Three
times Lola shoved him backward, and
clapped over the entrance hole a slab of
hemlock bark.
“Let me out!” wailed the captive.
“Please! Let me die in the open air.”
“Lay still,” growled his jailer. “Pooty
soon, med'cine she'll work. Needn’ be
scairt o' dyin'.”
Mark fought once more a losing fight
for one outdoor breath.
I37.


INJUN MEDICINE
drenched from top to toe under his blanket,
he lost every desire to move or speak. The
steam of the resinous fir-boughs made his
head swim.
Perhaps Lola did know. Perhaps; prob-
ably; certainly; why, of course Lola would
know. Lola could find lost idiots in the
dark. Lola could make medicine. Of
course he knew. . . .
“Hain't nothin’ wrong with your
father,” thought Mark. He made it into
a little, light-headed, quavering ditty.
“Hain't nothing wrong with my father.
Hain't nothing wrong, hain't nothing
wrong. . . .”
He fell asleep at some point in this com-
forting ballad.
I39.


MARK’S AWAKENING
comfort; but before he could welcome it
with speech or look, it dissolved into the
night again.
When he awoke, noonday blazed above
the tree-tops. He was lying in ripe yellow
grass near the water’s edge. Peace en-
folded him, not drowsily, but with a keen
renewal of all his faculties. The sunlight,
tempered by cool air, seemed lazily to
penetrate body and spirit. In all the con-
scious world there was not an ache or a
twinge. The sky glowed marvelously
clear; and as he sat up, rejoicing, the pond
sparkled everywhere among its calm, eter-
nally contented woods. Behind him, a
locust sang in the poplars. Before him,
cardinal flowers, leaning from the rocks,
painted the brown shore-water with
streaks of brilliant reflection.
“Aah!” he yawned, stretched like a rous-
ing dog, and stared about.
The place, a sheltered grass-patch, form-
ing one edge of Popple House point, looked
across Hardhack toward the campers’
I4I.


LOLA THE BEAR
“Who’d hang it there?”
“The Juds, o' course,” said Lola, gruffly.
“Whos'pose? Your father.”
Mark sat up, and with new interest
looked toward the far shore and its dark-
green hill.
“Was my father here—talking? Last
night?”
The Indian snorted, as though put out of
patience.
“Good gorry!” he cried. “Course he
was! An’ lit a match, an’ peekened at ye!”
Mark sat thinking. It was no dream,
then: his father had come in the night,
looked down at him with pity and tender-
ness, and then gone away. A feeling of
estrangement, of lonely separation from
all familiar things, came sweeping over
him.
“Lola,” he began, “I wish. . . .” He
boggled at the words, and ceased; yet it
seemed easy to confide in this man, who sat
with his back turned, motionless, like part
of the gray pine stump. “Lola, you saved
122
I44.


LOLA THE BEAR
found himself caught up in Lola's arms,
to be carried home to camp like a sick child.
Nobody came that night, or the next day.
Lola’s vigil among the stumps went unre-
warded. But on the third day, after break-
fast, as Mark was pacing by the fire, test-
ing his legs, he heard a sudden thud of
footsteps, and saw Lola come running up
the cove.
“Flag's out!” he panted. “I mus' go!”
Mark reached the canoe first, and
climbed into it.
“Can't leave me behind!” said he.
The Indian stared at him dubiously,
then seized a paddle.
“May need ye,” was his only comment.
“Se’ down.”
Mark had seen many a canoe race, many
a famous paddler; but not once, before or
afterward, did he know a canoe to fly as
now the Sea Rider flew across that morn-
ing water toward the sunrise. Lola swung
to.his work like a machine. In long rising
leaps they clove the fathomless mirror of
146.


MARK’S AWAKENING
sunlight was transfigured. He had found
his father.
While he exulted, a movement in the
grove caught his eye. Down through the
mottled pine-shadows came a long, blue-
clad figure, slinking from trunk to trunk
like a wolf. It made straight for the
isthmus. Through a patch of sunshine
bobbed a fiery head. It was Chubbuck.
“Stop where you are!” shouted Mark,
jumping out from behind the chokecher-
ries. In his present mood of jubilation, he
could halt a hundred such men. “Stop!”
And raising the pistol, he obeyed Lola’s
word, “onhitched,” and fired twice into the
air. Long woodland echoes went ripping
up the hill. A flock of black-birds, terri-
fied, rose from the cat-tails with a whirr.
At the edge of the clearing the red-haired
fugitive quailed, as though struck.
“Ho! You there, are ye?”
Glancing backward, doubling his fists,
Chubbuck gathered his courage and dashed
forth into the open.
I53.


LOLA THE BEAR
“You can't pass!” cried Mark.
With his one malignant eye, the rascal
squinted first at the creek, then at the sway-
ing cat-tails.
“Git out o' my ro'd!” he snarled.
“No passing.” Mark stood firm, with
weapon pointed at the ground.
The man showed his long yellow teeth.
“You can't stop me,” he stated, cynically.
“A thing your size? Why, you 'ain't got
the innards to fire at a man barehanded—
in cold blood. I know you’ain’t. What's
more, you know you ain't.”
He came deliberately forward. Mark
felt his body grow taut. He was ready.
“Look out,” he said hoarsely.
Not more than a yard of grass lay be-
tween them. He could see the red empty
socket straining as if to stare him down,
like the fellow’s eye.
“Come! Git! You can't.”
Mark shivered. His joints went loose
again. This man spoke the hateful truth.
“Gimme that!”
I54.


“Stop where you are!” shouted Mark.


LOLA THE BEAR
hands o' me. I never drawed knife ner
showed it, Juds. You tol’ me not to. Got
good brains fer remember, me.—But I lost
that red-head feller.”
Sheriff Hardy laughed.
“Here's your beauty.” He pointed down
at his captive Chubbuck, a weedy fresh-
water Triton lying under strings of mourn-
ful slime. “Though someways his hair
don’t show jest the right color.”
“Not quite,” agreed the Judge. “You’ve
been making the red one green, as Macbeth
used to say, Joe.”
The Sheriff seemed rather at a loss; but
he groped in his pocket and fetched out a
ball of strong cord-line.
“Dessay,” he replied courteously. “Any-
how, I perpose to add this sculpin to my
string.” He stooped, and began binding
his cord round Chubbuck's ankles. “Don’t
ye kick. Your arms is free. You're a-goin'
to paddle me all the ways down to Mis’
Johnquest, her store, and kneel to her on
your knees, damn ye, and beg a widder’s
158.